14. Poison Ivy with Abs #2
“Hey yourself,” Gen replied, not missing a beat, she tilted her head towards Mav. “I heard you’ve got a future rodeo star in training out there.”
Dean raised an eyebrow in my son’s direction. “He’s got the temperament for it,” he said, deadpan, but if you listened close enough there was a trace of pride hiding in his tone.
Mav glowed. “We’re gonna go now, okay Mom?” He was already halfway out the door, all but dragging Dean in his wake.
“Don’t let him eat goat food. Again,” I called after them, and Dean gave a subtle thumb’s up, which in his dialect meant “I’ll try, but no promises.”
“I was talking to Mav,” I teased.
Dean’s face broke into a smile that had enough wattage it could have lit up New York City. My entire body reacted without my approval. I felt tingles in places tingles did not belong.
The boys left, Dean locking eyes with me in that infuriatingly concise way he had before he left. Gen let out a low, impressed whistle.
Gen watched the scene unfold, then turned back to me, eyes twinkling. “That one’s trouble,” she said, and I wasn’t sure if she meant my son or Dean.
“Tell me about it,” I replied generically, but I didn’t quite mean it the way I used to. These days, he felt a little less like trouble, and a little more like hope.
“I’m serious,” she said, shaking her head with a little delighted shiver, “I never thought I’d see the day.”
It took me a moment to realize she was talking about Dean and not my four-year-old. “What day?” I asked, half expecting a punchline about the likelihood of Dean spending time with a human under the age of forty.
She laughed, the sound like clinking ice cubes in a glass, and leaned across my desk. “The day Dean Lockhart caught feelings for something that wasn’t a line on a spreadsheet. Did you see his face? I thought he was going to smile so hard he’d crack in half.”
I smiled, but not outwardly, just a kind of warm, private thing that settled in my chest like a mug of Nonna’s cinnamon cocoa.
“He’s been really sweet with Maverick,” I admitted, and instantly wanted to backspace the word ‘sweet’ out of existence. Dean Lockhart was not sweet. Sweet was for puppies and pop songs, not men who ran cattle operations and wore sarcasm like an armored coat.
But Gen didn’t correct me. She just nodded, eyes shining in that way people’s do when they’re waiting for the rest of the story. And for some reason I told it.
“He’s got this way of making everything sound like a checklist item,” I said.
“Like, ‘step one: don’t let the kid get trampled by horses. Step two: make sure he doesn’t fall in the feed bucket.
Step three: act like you’re not enjoying any of it, even a little bit. ’ Even though it’s obvious, you know?”
Gen propped her chin on her hand, grinning. “You’re telling me Dean Lockhart is a marshmallow inside?”
I laughed, a little at the description. “I think when it comes to Mav he is.”
We both sat there for a minute, the hum of the office broken only by the distant clack of Selma’s keyboard, and the muffled giggling of a child high on the scent of hay and hero worship.
I’d been bringing Mav to work all week, since Nonna was on a cruise and Selma insisted it was not an issue.
She said it was what boys his age needed and that it was good for morale, having him there.
No one seemed to disagree. Everyone looked out for him, from Grant in security, to Marta in housekeeping to Vivian, who ran the spa, they treated him like family.
They’d even given Maverick his own employee card.
And then there was Dean, who pretended to be annoyed by the extra noise but spent every spare minute he had with my kid.
I’d been skeptical at first, wondered if Dean was just being polite, or if he’d break under the pressure of relentless four-year-old curiosity.
But every day, without fail, Dean showed up and recruited Mav to help him with a task.
Then I’d find him kneeling in the dirt, showing Mav how to rake out a stall or measure the right amount of oats.
Every lesson was accompanied by some deeply scientific explanation, like why you always check a horse’s hooves, or how to tell if a goat is plotting your downfall.
He’d hand Mav a tiny brush, let him “help,” and never once laughed when my son’s best effort left a horse looking like it had been styled by a tornado.
I saw the way he watched Maverick’s face, waiting for the lightbulb moment when what he was explaining clicked or he accomplished his task.
I saw the way Dean beamed when Mav successfully mounted Pringle and rode him around the corral, while Mav declared himself a “real cowboy.”
Gen’s lips curled in that sly, knowing way she had. “Dean Lockhart: Secret Softie. They should put that on the brochure.”
I chuckled, playing it off like she was joking, but deep down, I was a little terrified by how easy it was to like him—how simple he made everything that, in my experience, had always been complicated. I’d dated enough men to know the difference between a performance and a promise.
Tanner, Mav’s dad, was a world-class actor.
He could charm his way out of a speeding ticket, into a job, or through the front door of a woman’s apartment at two a.m. He’d pulled that trick on me for years, and at first I didn’t mind.
I figured I could learn to live with unpredictability, that a little drama was the price you paid for an interesting life.
It wasn’t until Mav was born and Tanner started missing birthdays, holidays, and doctor’s appointments, that I realized what a raw deal it was.
I wanted more for my son. I wanted more for myself, even if it meant going it alone.
Which is why Dean’s brand of steady, undramatic presence was so unsettling.
He never made big declarations. Never tried to win me over with flowers or grand gestures.
But since arriving, I’d seen him do a million small things that added up to something much bigger.
He started stocking Capri Suns and Go-Gurts in the office fridge, which were Mav’s favorites.
I found the stash, right next to the fancy coffee he said was “too expensive.” He fixed the wheel on Mav’s favorite toy truck, using some kind of industrial glue that would probably outlast civilization.
He took the time to drive out to the farm supply store and buy a tiny cowboy hat—because the one Maverick insisted on wearing was too big and kept falling over his eyes.
He installed a hook at Mav’s eye level beside his office door, so the kid could hang up his little jacket just like the grown-ups.
He’d even started scheduling his own meetings around the times when he knew Mav would be in the building.
He never said it out loud, but I could tell. The calendar didn’t lie.
I noticed. I noticed everything. And the more I noticed, the harder it was to keep the walls around my heart and my own rules from crumbling.
When Gen finally left, promising to text details about the girl’s night I sat at my desk, staring out the open window.
The breeze brought in the smell of wildflowers and woodsmoke, and somewhere out there, I could hear Mav’s high-pitched laughter racing the wind.
For a long moment, I just let myself feel it: the weird, unfamiliar sensation of being cared for in ways I didn’t know how to name.
I’d dated charming men, I’d dated romantic men, I’d dated men who could talk you into believing anything for as long as they felt like it.
But I’d never, not once, dated a man who simply showed up.
Who didn’t ask for a medal every time he did the right thing.
Who could teach a little boy how to brush a horse and teach a grown woman, gently and wordlessly, that maybe not every man would eventually leave.
That realization was scarier than any heartbreak I’d known. Because now, the stakes were higher. It wasn’t just my heart on the line. It was Maverick’s too.
Maybe that’s what made Dean so dangerous. I didn’t want to want him, but every day made it harder not to. And if I let myself believe for one second that he would stay, that he could actually be the kind of man who kept showing up, I’d be risking everything I’d built to protect us.
But damn, if he wasn’t making it look easy.
And that’s when Dean Lockhart became a real, honest-to-God threat.
Because he was already in the process of becoming essential.